


Passing

by the_blue_fairie



Category: X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Again, Angst, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Nudism, Past Child Abuse, and struggling with my body image issues, and yes i am working through my dysphoria, i'm as surprised as anyone else, in fic form, yes I'm touching on X3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-17
Updated: 2021-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-26 12:48:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30106221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_blue_fairie/pseuds/the_blue_fairie
Summary: After the events of X3, Mystique struggles to regain a sense of self.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 7





	Passing

She had been nude for so long, she had forgotten the sensation of clothes on skin.

The sensation of hiding.

(Chameleon-color-change, Kelly’s body, burst to water, reconstituting itself, gold-eyes glinting in a frozen frame-)

But that was not hiding.

The shift of shape was of her skin, of more than skin – of her – for skin was surface and this was… deeper…

But skin was… more than surface.

“Skin was surface” was something one would say who had never been in her skin.

“Skin was surface” said skin was superficial.

(Her parents tried to murder her, demon-eyed, scale-skinned…)

Skin wasn’t superficial.

And it wasn’t… an obstacle to overcome.

(Her parents tried to cut her throat – tiny child, trusting – trusting the arms reaching out to her as if to hug her, beckoning her closer, _it’s all okay, Raven, come here_ – a hug that became a hold – helpless – hands clamped, suffocating the scream – thrashing like a thing possessed – demon-thing – not their daughter – not their daughter –)

(They had borne her as best they could, they had endured her, this was not on them, not their fault, _hers_ – that protestation, they did not protest, but it was implicit, slit-throat horror inexpressible, any sin of theirs, inexpressible – lips spluttering, enunciating no words but only sobs, sobs for their own sake, not for hers, look what they were doing, look what _she_ was making them do…)

For her parents, skin had been an obstacle to overcome.

Skin was not surface.

To say otherwise was to betray a privilege she did not have.

Skin was what they wanted to flay off you, scale by scale, not because they thought there was something human underneath (or cared if there was) but because what you were, was _inhuman_ …

It was all very well for some to say that skin was surface, brothers and sisters of her own had said so, whose skin was smooth – who could argue that something in them was human underneath, something (conveniently) reflected on the mirror-smooth surface of their skin…

They called her mirror, those who did not know her.

Mirror, reflection of many faces. Chameleon. Snake.

She did not exist to mirror them, reflect them, to be the object of their gaze as they longed to gaze upon themselves, drink in themselves, smooth silver-and-pearl mirror…

She smashed all mirrors by her presence.

Her very existence was defiance.

(Was.)

(Had been.)

Standing nude, skin blue as herself, eyes yellow as herself, as nothing of theirs.

Striding nude through alleyways, through abandoned hallways, shadow-places, and though she could slip easily into shadows, she was unashamed.

Standing nude, striding nude was not the same as –

Slumped.

Scrabbling.

Lying naked on the cold ground, skinned smooth to rose-pink-blood-pink, blood-on-snow-pallor of their beauty, clinging to herself, not suddenly succumbing to shame but clinging to herself because _herself_ had been stripped from her and she was holding tight to this peeled flesh to feel the blood pumping beneath it, feel the heart beating beneath it, feel something of herself in this… thing they made her.

Snow-white-rose-red beauty, her parents would be so proud, blood dripping from pinprick flesh upon the snow…

She could pass now easily; all it took were some coverings upon her body and –

She hated that word.

_Passing._

Hated its expectation, its connotations, the sense of superiority some ascribed to themselves who could, the sense of privilege some ascribed to those who _had to…_

The mutant child hiding within their family’s walls, passing as human, mimicking motion because _one wrong move_ –

That was not privilege.

(Skin was not surface.)

(If skin was survival, skin was not surface.)

It was not a privilege to assimilate.

It was not a privilege to hide.

_We are all under the same knife._

Even the mutant in the fine suit among the Homo Sapiens in their fine suits, with his white square jaw and his buckwheat smile, who protested that, “Skin is surface!” was under that knife, and if he thought otherwise, he was deluded…

_But that knife cut deeper those who could not or refused to adhere…_

Adherence.

Clinging to strictures as clothing clung to the body.

She had been nude for so long, she had forgotten the sensation of clothes on skin.

But clothes were a necessity, survival’s necessity, another privilege of adherence...

Droplets of blood splash upon the silver snow…

She could blur now among the reflective surfaces, pale petal face sodden by grey rain, pulling the petal apart, each grey drop an accumulation, a reflection of others’ eyes, a gnarled tree among the mechanized haze, factory landscape – gnarled, solitary – its bloom not even as green-golden as the belch of smokestacks, pus-drizzle amid the ashen air…

Antonioni-isolation. Ezra’s ether of detachment. Others’ eyes, others’ reflections, and she – put through their prism – their prism as point of comparison –

She came to the place without knowing why, the nudist resort.

Resort. Commercialized word. Artificial word. Maybe she came because the human was rubbing off on her, because she hardly knew who she was anymore and blurring in a haze of pale bodies, sameness, was…

Maybe she came because she just… wanted… to feel the sensation of being nude again…

To stand nude in some small spot where eyes would not be upon her…

Where, at least in that, she would not feel… so out of place…

Some place where, even if in the cracks of their society, their world, their spheres, she could find some reclamation of herself…

And it almost worked.

As she strode forward, sun on her skin, air on her body…

But looking down at herself…

But still, she didn’t want to stop.

Go back to some grey room in some grey coverings…

This was… comfort to her...

Catching glimpses of her reflection in reflective surfaces, she didn’t know why, didn’t know what this could accomplish, half-hated that it helped her, reminded her of herself…

But it helped her.


End file.
